A Possible Australia-Japan-Korea Trilateral is Gathering Momentum

Those suffering from acronym fatigue will scarcely welcome any new minilateral grouping in the Indo-Pacific. Yet an Australia-Japan-Korea trilateral shows signs of gathering momentum.
It’s an idea touted at least as long ago as 2014 during the US rebalance to Asia when Hayley Channer suggested building security webs with these two other key US allies as an effective way to protect Australia’s interests.
Since then, we have seen the rise and endurance of minilaterals in the Indo-Pacific. As Sarah Teo explains it, minilateralism has emerged due to the shortcomings of large-scale multilateralism and the deepening of major power rivalry. Such groupings often have China as their shared concern, whether implicitly or explicitly. For example, joint statements from the 2023 US-Japan-South Korea summit and 2024 US-Japan-Philippines summit both called out Chinese behaviour.
If an Australia-Japan-Korea trilateral does form, it may be distinct in being less about China and more of a response to the US and its likely behaviour. Recent activity seems to have been partly motivated by concerns about the impact of a second Trump administration, giving impetus to put effort into minilaterals without the US.
To get a sense of what is driving Australia-Japan-Korea trilateral activity, it is worth looking at the Track 1.5 dialogues—involving officials and non-officials—that have explored the potential of this nascent grouping to date. In June 2024, the United States Studies Centre held its inaugural Australia-Japan-South Korea trilateral dialogue supported by the Australia-Japan Foundation and the Australia-Korea Foundation. It presented the grouping as “intuitive”:
AJK share common values around freedom, democracy and the rules-based international order; they have numerous shared security interests; all are US treaty allies; and they all currently enjoy strong or improving bilateral relations.
The report did not shy away from the barriers, including lack of consensus on China, sometimes volatile Japanese-South Korean relations, and each state’s limited diplomatic resources to invest in competing priorities. But participants saw growing momentum in the fact that recent strategies from all three states emphasise the importance of multilateral cooperation among likeminded states, “including cooperation that extends beyond each state’s respective bilateral relationship with the United States.”
This theme was even more evident at a recent trilateral dialogue organised by Korea’s East Asia Institute that was initially advertised as “Envisioning the Indo-Pacific without America?” Held just prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration, experts from the three countries identified challenges and strategies for each in security, trade, and technology in light of the upcoming administration. While there were differences in how each country expected to be affected, there were also striking similarities.
What stood out for me was not so much that the three are like-minded—although they do share principles, values, and similar visions for the Indo-Pacific—as the idea of them as being “like-positioned,” suggested by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy’s Siwook Lee. As someone with some scepticism about defining like-mindedness, I thought this was a much-superior framing. Asking how the three countries are positioned at the start of the second Trump administration gives a sense of where their strategic interests and imperatives might align.
So will this emerging trilateral have staying power? It depends on what you mean.
As a specific grouping, perhaps not. The University of Sydney’s Thomas Wilkins tried out options like AJK or KAJ, which don’t roll off the tongue. I’d probably go for JASKA if the grouping were formalised to join the latticework of the minilateralverse.
But in another sense, what’s important is not whether there is a grouping that has profile and visibility. Another grouping that brings together Korea and Australia is MIKTA, along with Mexico, Indonesia, and Türkiye. It can be derided as low-profile, but it is apparently helpful enough to foreign ministers from the five countries that they keep scheduling it.
In the case of Australia, Japan, and Korea, perhaps it is more about the value that each gains from interaction rather than presenting themselves as a bloc. The USSC dialogue suggested a focus on “establishing habits of cooperation,” “informal, rather than institutionalised cooperation,” and on “aligning national efforts.” This might mean that as Korea does more with the Pacific Islands, it talks to Australia and Japan with their long experience in the region; as Australia focuses on Southeast Asia trade and investment, it considers ways to work with experienced Japanese and Korean counterparts.
This suggests it is not so much about whether Australia-Japan-Korea becomes a formal grouping, as to whether they are keeping each other in mind. It is a difficult world to negotiate for these “like-positioned” powers. Aligning their efforts means they can play a more pivotal role—and a bit of solidarity may help with the dislocation and disorientation of a changing US.
Melissa Conley Tyler FAIIA is the Executive Director of the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D). She served as National Executive Director of the Australian Institute of International Affairs from January 2006 to March 2019.
This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.